Textile fabric is often formed from strands, or filaments, of yarn by weaving or knitting or the like to hold the strands together. Processes of weaving and knitting where strands are guided over and under adjacent strands are slow and do not permit much variety in forming fabric shapes. In a loom for weaving fabrics, the weft yarns are added one at a time. These processes typically result in flat or cylindrical fabrics. There is a need for a process that, in addition to making flat or cylindrical fabrics, permits more variety in forming fabrics with random three dimensional shapes, for instance, that would permit forming an article of clothing, such as a shirt, without having to cut pieces of fabric and seam them together. The cutting of fabric into irregularly shaped patterns wastes a lot of fabric, plus cutting and sewing add steps over forming the fabric article directly. The same problem is present in making flexible engineered shapes such as automotive air bags, sail boat sails, industrial filter bags, or the like. In these cases, the need for seams to form three dimensional shapes presents problems with structural strength and/or permeability so the seams must be carefully made.
There is a need for a way to rapidly form a flexible fabric from strands of yarn; there is a need for a way to rapidly form a three dimensional, flexible, fabric article without cutting a flat fabric and seaming.
There is also a problem making complex shapes for composite structures that may be impregnated with a hardenable resin. It is sometimes desired to lay down the filaments in a three dimensional shape before adding the resin or during resin addition. Present means for doing so involve complex forms with retractable support means to hold the filaments in place before the resin hardens. There is a need for a simpler way to preform these fabric shapes without seams. Such seams would compromise the strength of the composite structure.
A series of Oswald patents (U.S. Pat. No. 4,600,456; U.S. Pat. No. 4,830,781; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,966) lay down a pattern of partially vulcanized rubber coated strips, or cords, to make a loop of preformed reinforcing belt for a vehicle tire. The strips or cords are stuck together wherever they touch to make a relatively stiff structure. The cords are laid in a "zig-zag repeating pattern with succeeding lengths of the strips being displaced from each other. The cord lengths are interleaved with lengths of cords disposed at an opposite angle . . . This interleaving relationship results in a woven structure". The stickiness of the partially vulcanized rubber apparently holds the cords in place to a forming surface and to each other until the belt is assembled with other elements of the tire and molded under heat and pressure to form a completed tire.
The process practiced by Oswald and others uses one or a few cords that are traversed back and forth across the belt numerous times to complete one circumference. This is believed to result in a multilayered structure where the cords in any one layer are sparsely arrayed, but they do not completely cover the belt area. It is only after repeated zig-zag passes over the belt area that the area becomes sparsely covered with cord. Due to the repeated zig-zag passes of only a few cords, it is believed that within any one layer there are cords layed down in two different directions that do not cross one another. Cords that cross one another would be in different layers. These structural features of the reinforcing belts are symptomatic of a process that lays down only a few cords at a time and must make repeated passes over the belt area to get coverage of the area. There is a need for a simple non-weaving process that can make fabric structures by laying down many yarns simultaneously over a fabric area to sparsely cover it rapidly, and to stack several of such sparse yarn coverages to densely cover the area.